School committee will take part in daylong retreat

Busy times are ahead for both the regional and local school committees. Members of the Somerset Berkley Regional School Committee and interim Superintendent Thomas Lynch will focus on ways to improve the district at an upcoming Saturday workshop/retreat.

Busy times are ahead for both the regional and local school committees.

Members of the Somerset Berkley Regional School Committee and interim Superintendent Thomas Lynch will focus on ways to improve the district at an upcoming Saturday workshop/retreat.

It will be held Oct. 19 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Venus de Milo on Route 6 in Swansea.

It is not billed as a public event but rather as a tool for the seven-member school board of elected and appointed officials from the two communities, which regionalized into a grades 9 to 12 district in 2010.

“This is really a workshop where we’re getting our School Committee together to spend the day looking at our roles and how we can improve our effectiveness,” said School Committee member Julie Gagliardi of Somerset, working with School Committe member Cris Ghilarducci of Berkley on the proposed agenda.

Budgets, personnel and curriculum could be among the many topics of the six-hour workshop.

With five members from Somerset and two from the smaller Berkley district, the other members are Chairman Richard Peirce, Vice Chairwoman Elizabeth White, Robert Camara and Lori Rothwell, all of Somerset and George Kelly of Berkley.

Camara is the Somerset School Committee chairman. Rothwell also serves on that board. Ghilarducci also serves on the Berkley School Committee.

The seven-member regional School Committee plans to finalize the agenda for the workshop/retreat at tonight’s regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Somerset Berkley Regional High School, Gagliardi said.

Another topic of committee discussion with Lynch may be the transition to a new regional high school, which will open next school year in September at the same site.

Gagliardi said she and Ghilarducci have been recruiting speakers with experience on new school building openings to address the school board and suggest planning tools.

The five-member Somerset School Committee had originally scheduled a budget workshop for Oct. 19 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. However, the regional session has put that on hold, Camara and district Superintendent Richard Medeiros said.

“We may still have it,” Camara said.

With he and Rothwell also serving on the regional committee, there’s a conflict with the timing, Camara said.

That will depend on how much can be accomplished at the Somerset School Committee’s next meeting on Oct. 17 (6:30 p.m., North Elementary School) billed as an extended meeting and workshop.

One timely issue to address will be finalizing recommended cuts from the fiscal 2014 budget to offset $430,000 in deficits from fiscal 2013.

Three articles are listed on the Oct. 28 special Town Meeting warrant to address those deficits.

At the School Committee’s latest meeting Thursday night, Vice Chairman Jamison Souza and committee member Victor Machado sharply debated how to respond to the large deficit from operating and school lunch funds last year.

Page 2 of 2 - Souza, as he’s stated previously, said he thought at least a portion of the deficit should be offset from the town’s stabilization fund.

The approximately $137,000 lunch program deficit, he said, “is not something we inflicted.”

Souza also listed more than $1 million over the past five years he said was reimbursed to the town from Medicaid and other areas paid through the school budget.

Machado called that argument one of “smoke and mirrors. The reason we’re giving back to the community is because they’re giving us more,” he said at the outset of a long debate.

Medeiros said the approach he and the committee have taken is to cut this year’s budget to pay back the deficit.

“We’re rolling up our sleeves,” he said, “and we are accepting responsibility.”